Among the many questions (and blind rage) coursing through The Walking Dead fans after Sunday’s cliffhanger end to Season 6, many wonder how the AMC horror drama intends to keep its big death under wraps from prying eyes on the set. Now, producers reveal that even the cast remains in the dark, promising to take extra precaution to preserve Season 7 secrecy.

You’re warned of full spoilers for The Walking Dead Season 6 finale from here on out, but where the first person perspective of Negan’s violent attack obscured any chance of identifying the victim, one has to to wonder how Season 7 might keep things under wraps, between outdoor shoots, absent cast members, actors taking new projects, or a trailer presumably due at Comic-Con 2016. Executive producer Scott Gimple spoke with reporters at length on the finale, explaining that while no one actually filmed a death scene, he’d known for some time the likely target.

Andrew Lincoln even revealed that the cast made a pact not to learn the imminently departed among them, but how might Gimple keep things under wraps, given eagle-eyed fans?

We are doing our best in all those areas. It is very, very difficult nowadays … That said, we are working very hard to put things in place hopefully to protect it … We are going to try to protect the secret of this and to protect the audience’s experience. I sure hope it doesn’t leak but the world is what the world is.

The showrunner also admitted that while the finale left certain clues as to who might fall under Negan’s bat, no one would necessarily figure it out by evidence alone:

I believe there is no way. There are a couple of things in there that might help people possibly limit the amount of people who are vulnerable. But I will recommend people not to go down that route. I truly don’t think there’s a way to puzzle it all out definitively.

Filming on Season 7 will likely begin as early as May, putting Gimple’s words to the test, but will the final reveal prove worth the potential backlash? What further tricks might The Walking Dead pull out to keep fans in the dark?